Americans celebrated the Persian Gulf War as a major victory for U.S. military forces and as a vindication of the nation's defense structure. But outside the United States, the conflict taught an additional lesson: a direct military confrontation with the United States would inevitably result in defeat. So while the United States has continued to develop its conventional forces (the Pentagon's defense budget is now larger than those of the 12 next largest nations combined), other countries have looked elsewhere for an asymmetric advantage. "The rest of the world realizes that you don't take the United States on in a military frontal sense, but you can probably bring it down or cause severe damage in a more oblique way," asserts Art Money, assistant secretary of defense for command, control, and intelligence. "And that's where the vulnerability in the United States resides."

A decade after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military stands as an uncontested superpower in both conventional and nuclear force. Ironically, its overwhelming military superiority and its leading edge in information technology have also made the United States the country most vulnerable to cyber-attack. Other nations know that they have fallen behind in military muscle, so they have begun to look to other methods for bolstering their war-fighting and defense capacities -- namely, "asymmetrical warfare," which the Pentagon characterizes as "countering an adversary's strengths by focusing on its weaknesses."

AFTER THREE YEARS OF STUDYING THE United States' security needs in the coming quarter century, the Commission on National Security/21st Century reached some alarming conclusions -- particularly in regard to the Internet-borne weapons and attacks of mass disruption.

The 14-member bipartisan commission, chartered by former President Clinton and myself, unanimously agreed that the United States faces new and serious cyber-space-based threats. Our adversaries are becoming more sophisticated in developing new methods for disrupting our normal progression -- socially and economically. From breaking down communications systems to initiating electrical blackouts to infiltrating and disrupting our financial systems, there are a number of major disruptions that could unravel our economy, diminish our quality of life and generally destabilize the nation.

This time, a key stated fear is information warfare, or sneak electronic assaults that could crash power grids, financial networks, transportation systems and telecommunications, among other vital services.

National security aides trace the threat to hostile or potentially hostile governments as well as drug lords, criminal cartels and increasingly computer savvy guerrilla groups.

Some of these organizations "are doing reconnaissance today on our networks, mapping them, looking for vulnerabilities," Richard Clarke, President Clintons top aide for infrastructure protection and counterterrorism, told a Microsoft Corp. digital security conference in Redmond, Washington, on Dec. 8.

OPPONENTS OF THE USA WILL USE CYBERWAR, CHEMICAL, OR BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS IN AN ATTACK

The U.S. intelligence community voiced its concerns last week with the release of "Global Trends 2015," a wide-ranging analysis by the CIA, its sister U.S. spy shops and outside experts.

The report said foes of a militarily dominant United States, rather than challenging it head-on, would seek to target an Achilles heel in cyberspace or threaten the use of the deadliest chemical, nuclear or biological weapons.

"Such asymmetric approaches  whether undertaken by states or nonstate actors  will become the dominant characteristic of most threats to the U.S. homeland," the report, released by the National Intelligence Council, said.

Over time, attacks are increasingly likely to be fired off through computer networks rather than conventional arms, as "the skill of U.S. adversaries in employing them" evolves, the assessment said.